The National Center on Accessible Information Technology in Education

About AccessIT

The National Center on Accessible Information Technology in Education (AccessIT) was funded by a 5-year grant from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) of the U.S. Department of Education (grant #H133D010306) through September, 2006. AccessIT developed materials, and provided training and technical assistance to facilitate adoption of policies and practices leading to the increased use of accessible information technology in educational settings.

The following resources developed by AccessIT continue to be available online and managed and updated by the DO-IT Center as part of its contribution to AccessComputing, a project funded by the National Science Foundation (grant #CNS-0540615,CNS-0837508, and CNS-1042260) and co-sponsored by the UW Department of Computer Science.

Knowledge Base

The Knowledge Base
is a searchable database of questions and answers, promising practices, and case studies.
AccessIT contributed over 150 articles to the Knowledge Base, all related to information technology accessibility in education.

Free Web Design & Development Curriculum

The introductory course curriculum on web design and development, now known as
WebD2, integrates accessibility into a mainstream course.
It was created for grades 9-12, but has been used at academic levels ranging from middle school to community college.
It includes eight units covering introductory design and site planning, HTML coding, cascading style sheets, JavaScript,
graphic design, site design and management, and use of web authoring tools. Students end the course by designing an
accessible website for their school or local community organization.

The curriculum is cross-platform and vendor-neutral, so teachers can use it regardless of which operating system,
web browser, graphic software, and web authoring tool they have installed in their schools.
The curriculum is available free of charge and hundreds of teachers worldwide are now using it in their classrooms.

Accessible University Demonstration Site

Accessible University (AU) is a fictional university home page designed to demonstrate a variety of
common web design problems that result in visitors with disabilities being unable to access content or features.
It includes a page with accessibility problems, a page that lists and explains the problems and recommends solutions,
and an accessible page that implements the solutions.